In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth—and some time much later, humans invented emojis. The obvious end result is that someone would rewrite the Bible with emojis to stand in place of words like “God,” “book,” and “peace.”
The final product, the brainchild of the creator of the Bible Emoji Twitter account, is nearly 3,300 pages, and is now available for download on iTunes for $2.99. The book is described as “a great and fun way to share the gospel.” Another edition of the King James Bible, printed without emojis, on iTunes is over 3,400 pages long.
“I wanted to make it similar to how you might text or tweet a bible verse, by shrinking the total character count,” the anonymous author told the Guardian.
The author has yet to reveal his or her identity; when asked by the Guardian, the translator asked to be identified only be the emoji of a guy with sunglasses (😎). The download page for the iBook lists a “@BibleEmoji” as the publisher.
Whoever wrote it, the author told the Guardian that this adaptation of the King James Bible was created with a program that “linked 80 emojis with 200 corresponding words.” The author then tweeted the emoji-fied verses, sometimes inviting others to criticize the accuracy of the translation—proving, maybe, no one knows what you’re saying with emojis after all.